


in shade

by xylodemon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 08:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xylodemon/pseuds/xylodemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winterfell is not as Sansa remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in shade

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this image](http://ofhouseadama.tumblr.com/post/39991924187/sansa-stark-came-home-she-was-the-only-stark-who) on Tumblr, and the text _sansa stark came home. she was the only stark who did. the lone wolf, they call her. the last of her pack. she’s like a ghost._
> 
> Contains vague spoilers past _A Storm of Swords_.

Winterfell is not as she remembers.

She dreamed of it often while a hostage at King's Landing and the Eyrie, of its familiar passages and yards, the broad sweep of its arches and the damp heat of the glass gardens, the way its baileys and turrets once stretched upward, proud and straight as they reached for the sky, strong even when shaped by just her memory and handfuls of snow. It is just a lichyard now, thick with ghosts and more than half a ruin, the towers broken and the gates buckled, the stone gouged and cracked and split, blackened with both blood and ash.

_It is still my place. I am the only wolf left, the last living blood of House Stark._

She sews new dresses for herself, each in fine grey wool with white fur at the collar and cuffs, the only colors she will ever wear again, and she stitches a direwolf onto the black cloak she brought down from the Wall, the last gift Jon gave her before he rode north to die. She visits the crypts every morning, staring at the aunt and uncle she never knew, the grandfather murdered by the Mad King, the father whose life she begged for on her knees. At night she sleeps in her mother's old chambers, one of the few sets of rooms to survive Ramsay's sacking and fires, but she leaves the window open in spite of the weather, determined to let the cold back into her bones, to feel the North beneath her skin once again.

The men call her a living shade where they think she can't hear it, their eyes narrowed as they watch her walk through the crumbling halls, averted when she speaks with them about the food stores and repairs. It bothers her, twisting into the constant ache burning underneath her ribs, but she often wonders if they have the right of it, if she has finally grown hollow and cold from the weight of everything she's lost.

"They will settle once they see you wed, my lady," Myranda tells her one evening, her face sallow in the flickering light from the fire. "Lord Jon's death has made them anxious about heirs."

"I've no desire to marry."

"But you must."

"I needn't marry just to have heirs," Sansa says, setting her sewing on her knee. "My children will be fathered by wolves, and they will be Starks, not Umbers or Karstarks or Glovers."

She meets with the master stone-mason the next morning, an old man with gnarled hands and watery eyes who lets a frown tug the bushy line of his beard when she explains the newest set of orders.

"All of them, my lady?" he asks, ducking his head, sweat beading his brow despite the snow piling in the godswood. "Even Lord Stark's bastard?"

"Jon Snow died protecting both my birthright and the realm." 

"Of course, my lady. I'll need to go down to the crypts, and see how much stone I have to work with."

"No. I want the statues out here."

He frowns again, twisting his hands into the folds of his dusty apron. "Out here?"

"I haven't any bones to lay to rest," she says, thinking of Robb, who died by treachery, and Rickon, who was lost as sea while crossing the Bay of Seals, and Jon, whose body was burned so it wouldn't rise again, and of Arya and Bran, who she has not seen in years. "If their shades must wander, then let them do it here, where they can feel the sun and snow on their faces."


End file.
